The new Sponge homepage - Discussion thread

This thread is reserved for feedback and suggestions about the new Sponge homepage.

Personally I think its awesome. I like the new look and it’s way more user-friendly. You can see all the staff better and it’s just a better feeling to be there. The only thing I miss is the easy to find ‘Forum’ button, it’s, if you’re not used to, ‘hard’ to find in this version.

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I don’t know what they did, but it looks really crappy on my phone (IE on Windows phone 8.1)


Pro-tip: clear: both should fix it :wink:

Ok, now I’m on my desktop.

  • The footer links (Privacy Policy, Wiki, …) are not working.
  • The favicon is blue!?
  • There is still no proper FAQ
  • The animation of the GitHub/Reddit/IRC buttons is too slow (and unnecessary)
  • a lot of issues when you change the size of your window
  • sponsorship link spacing
  • why is the github logo always red?
  • the shiny background image is not spongy…
  • the bottom sponge logo is grey?

And: Although the site fills 3 screens, almost no useful information is presented.

Why not just follow the theme of the forum?

6 Likes

I definitely agree on those points. You guys really need to redesign the front page a bit. Spoiler alert, it’s a mess.

I think they should just use XenForo. But thats what I think :wink:

XenForo is a forum software, and not for non-forum websites.

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Bukkit uses XenForo, Spigot uses XenForo.

I hope you know the discussion is about the homepage, not the forum :o

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It can be both.

I already tweeted @Antariano and he fixed all of this :smiley:

Hey guys, please keep up the good feedback! I’ll be watching this post and will improve the site as we go. Sorry for the mobile issues/dead links, that was some code that didn’t get pushed at first!

Try to keep the feedback constructive (=> not vague).

Thanks!

4 Likes

@HippoBeans. Please note that this thread is not reserved for the FORUM but for the HOMEPAGE! Thank you.

All the png’s are hard coded to load over http, despite the fact that we now support full ssl over https, could someone fix this so that these pictures are linked using protocol relative links. Thankyou.

Correction:
Only the user avatars at the bottom are not loading over a protocol relative link.

Are you building the full site, or just the home page?

1 Like

It works great for me on iPad, but a small part of the moving sponge thing doesn’t show up

It also works completely fine on my iPhone (4s). Tested it several times. Keep up the good work @Antariano!

WindowsPhone… :wink:

Header and footer images don’t fully expand

1 Like

I pushed several fixes that should address most of the problems mentioned. Will take a bit until it’s put on production, though, I have no authority over the servers :slight_smile:

There should be space between the avatar boxes.

@Antariano I like how it only shows the text of the last status update :wink:

Some Suggestions:

  • Shrink the author/date of the news items and use the space for the news heading (from ‘by me4502 Sun, 26 Oct 2014 10:05:27 GMT ’ to ‘26 Oct 2014 by me4502’).
  • Show 5 instead of 3 news?
  • Put the ‘What is Sponge?’ text next to the news (instead of the sponsorship stuff, and 50% width).
  • Reformat the sponsorship message: Just put it in one line, in a full width box:
Sponsored by a partnership with [CreeperHost] and [Nitrous Networks]

instead of…

Sponsored by a partnership with
[CreeperHost]
[Nitrous Networks]